Because of the growth of the number of automotive vehicles in the United States and around the world, and because many highways need reconstruction because of obsolescence or overloaded highways, the repair and reconstruction of highway surfaces has become a continuing requirement in order to keep the highways capable of carrying the large volume of traffic that must be handled. In such cases, it is always necessary to detour traffic around the repair site thus causing additional costs and delay in traffic movement. Much of it has to be one-way traffic and thus controlled by guards at each end of the detour strip to regulate the one-way flow of traffic in opposite directions at alternate times.
In order to alleviate such problems, prior art devices such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,698,866 and 3,811,147, British Patent No. 2,187,776 and German Patent No. 3,107,408 all disclose assemblies which comprise a structure provided with road wheels which support road construction apparatus on the road surface for travel thereon. The structure provides a traffic bearing surface including a rear ramp surface inclined upwardly from the rear end of the traffic bearing surface and a front ramp surface inclined downwardly from the front end of the traffic bearing surface. The apparatus includes means of driving at least some of the road wheels and steering them, road making equipment all accommodated below the traffic bearing surface such that in use the apparatus can be propelled along the road in a direction determined by the wheels. The front and rear ends of the traffic bearing surface respectively leading and trailing in the direction determined by the wheels. The traffic moving along the road in the same direction and in line with the apparatus at a higher speed than the latter can run onto the rear ramp surface from the rear of the apparatus and pass over the traffic bearing surface to run down the front ramp surface and pass on ahead of the apparatus while the road surface beneath the apparatus is simultaneously being repaired by the road making apparatus. In all these devices, the vehicle supplying materials for repair of the roadway must be either driven along side of the mobile roadway apparatus or stop traffic on the roadway surface while discharging its contents or receiving a load of waste material from under the bridge structure. Thus, in the prior art, the devices make no provision for enabling vehicles to receive and discharge materials for use in constructing the roadway from the movable roadway itself without hindering traffic. Further, the devices in the prior art all enable traffic to move in one direction only and are not able to control and handle traffic that travels in opposite directions. In addition, the structures in the prior art are limited to carrying traffic in one direction only and thus cannot accommodate traffic lanes in both directions as well as traffic lanes for supply vehicles.
The present invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a continuously movable highway construction device that has accommodations for traffic lanes in both directions as well as additional traffic lanes for supply vehicles to carry supplies to and from the device for the construction of the roadway taking place under the device. In addition, the novel system provides crossover bridges to enable the traffic to continue to cross the old highway when the old crossover bridges have been removed and to allow traffic to cross the new highway that's been constructed during the period of time that a new crossover bridge is being constructed. Further, the device utilizes support means having hydraulically controlled arms to position the support means such that the device can move itself in a "walking" fashion continuously along the roadway or move itself off the roadway sidewise and can adjust each leg at different heights to accommodate terrain of varying heights.
The support means can be footpads that "walk" or continuously driven tracks or wheels that move the unit in any direction but particularly in the forward direction at a rate sufficiently slow to enable the construction to take place beneath the device while allowing traffic to travel over the device at essentially normal speeds.